The Rural Poor Of Thailand... Some Surprises

[IanForbes]

I live just 18km outside Udon. For the past 5 years, I've been bike riding in neighborhoods all around the province. Hardly a ride goes by when I don't shake my head in wonder, "This is the 21st century and people still live like this?" Grass thatch roofs, woven bamboo walls, tinned over windows because there are no windows, an electrical cord running hundreds of meters to provide minimal power for a light, fan, maybe a tv. No running water, or if the village is lucky to have a pond, water tanks that are ill-kept or pumps that are not operating. Mandatory education? Not in my village.....a good percentage of the boys quit after grade 6 and many who continue through grade 9 are there in name only. We call the village a 'baby factory' because of the number of kids who keep appearing. Sure there are plenty of Thais who don't live like this, but to underestimate the number who are deprived is akin to wearing blinders.

It is all in your perspective of life. When my son was 19 he moved an old beaten up house trailer into the wilderness of central BC. His friend did the same and the two lads shoved their trailers together and built a ramshackle fort around it. They lived just as you said... no water and no toilet. Their only electricity was a 200 meter extension cord from a neighbour. In winter, it gets down to 30 below and the ground is frozen hard. The boys put in a wood stove for heat BETWEEN the two trailers. They lived like that for two years and thought they were in heaven. They each had part time jobs that earned the bare minimum wage and was WELL BELOW what is commonly called "poverty level" and yet they couldn't have been happier. Like I said, it's all in your perception.

[anon7867763]

There are still millions who wake up at the crack of dawn and do back breaking work all day long 6 or 7 days a week.Live in extremely basic houses and wouldnt survive without financial help from their offspring.Alot of them are actually in debt but its obviosly not recorded in the statistics , many of them pay high rates of interest but Unicef and world bank etc have no idea about this.If you took time to move around Bangkok and not just stay arouns Sukhumvit and the centre you will cllearly see slums that accomodate hundreds of thousands of people.A construction labour worker will typically earn around 6.000 baht a month , I´d like to see you do that.Have you ever been to many places up country ? I doubt it.

Wake up , these orginazations have no idea and just sit in their offices playing around with numbers and not reality.Most of this article is complete rubbish.

Thailand has ALOT of poverty , no people dot starve to death Thailand is known as the garden of Asia and produces alot of food but alot of people in Thailand have an extremely hard life.

Just because they smilealot , it doesn´t mean they are comfortable like the people who work in UNICEF , World bank and yourself etc

I suggest you go to neighboring Laos, Cambodia or much, much better to India, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ivory Coast...!

Then you know how "poor" Thailand's citizens and Thailand as a country really is..!

But the OP wasn't really about poverty - it was about someone straight forward claims that HE did this - that HE lifted the "rural poor" out of their misery and to simply set the record straight about this political trickster stunt or is it a simple publicity lie - which everyone wholeheartedly bought into....?

He simply usurped others..... deeds and if so the honor belongs to people like Prem and Anand, that is why he tries to frame them as the "amitiya" which supposedly suppresses the people - quite daring - isn't it?

But also speaks volumes about the character of the people behind all this!

As an onlooker I feel more and more disgusted!

Nobody is saying that thailand is porrer that Burma Laos etc.Why do we allways have to compare something with the lowest common denominator ?.

[Spee]

I live just 18km outside Udon. For the past 5 years, I've been bike riding in neighborhoods all around the province. Hardly a ride goes by when I don't shake my head in wonder, "This is the 21st century and people still live like this?" Grass thatch roofs, woven bamboo walls, tinned over windows because there are no windows, an electrical cord running hundreds of meters to provide minimal power for a light, fan, maybe a tv. No running water, or if the village is lucky to have a pond, water tanks that are ill-kept or pumps that are not operating. Mandatory education? Not in my village.....a good percentage of the boys quit after grade 6 and many who continue through grade 9 are there in name only. We call the village a 'baby factory' because of the number of kids who keep appearing. Sure there are plenty of Thais who don't live like this, but to underestimate the number who are deprived is akin to wearing blinders.

It is all in your perspective of life. When my son was 19 he moved an old beaten up house trailer into the wilderness of central BC. His friend did the same and the two lads shoved their trailers together and built a ramshackle fort around it. They lived just as you said... no water and no toilet. Their only electricity was a 200 meter extension cord from a neighbour. In winter, it gets down to 30 below and the ground is frozen hard. The boys put in a wood stove for heat BETWEEN the two trailers. They lived like that for two years and thought they were in heaven. They each had part time jobs that earned the bare minimum wage and was WELL BELOW what is commonly called "poverty level" and yet they couldn't have been happier. Like I said, it's all in your perception.

That looks a new 3-wheel ATV and the front wheel of a fairly new motorcycle. They couldn't have been too far down and out.

[RPETER65]

This thread is headed "The rural poor of Thailand"

I live amongst the Rural poor and so I do not agree with much of this article.

Certainly many will keep chickens, but very few grow their own vegetables and keep pigs. Vegetable plots in a village need to be fenced in otherwise they are destroyed by the foraging chickens and the packs of dogs. The need to fence in the plot makes it too expensive.

Unemployment figures are based on the governments figure for "workforce" and don't include millions of the real unemployed. I would estimate that 75% of the people in this village do not have full time jobs and work on a casual basis.

It is ridiculous to say that a "security guard wanted" sign or difficulty in finding a plumber in Bangkok proves that there is plenty of work available to the rural Thai. Most rural Thais live in rural Thailand.

Each female, on average, gives birth to 1.6 children in her lifetime ??

Total rubbish. I know very few middle age women that do not have at least 2 children. Most families around here have at least 4.

Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years

Maybe they get many years of schooling, but the general quality of the state education is appalling.

As is the number of holiday days. The children will go back to school next week after a long holiday but I can almost guarantee that there will be at least 3 days in the following 2 weeks that the school will be closed. Thailand must be the world leader in Public holidays.

With a population of 66 million, Thailand has 62 million registered cellphones

I am not aware that cellphones are registered. Simcards are though, and many people have more than 1 simcard registered in their name. My girlfriend had her phone stolen and tried to de-register the Sim, but was unable to do so.

I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education. It is not the lack of education possibilities in Thailand but the lack of interest to take advantage of what is out there.

I also live in the rural area of Thailand and have relatives to prove, if the desire is there so are the opportunities. My wife comes from one of those poor rural families, her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree in education his wife also has a masters degree and nteaches at a local high school, all three children have at least bachelors degrees, the oldest currently working on her doctorate in chemestry, the youngest on his masters in physics, the oldest will be attending MIT in the U.S. to finish her doctorate. If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.The problem most children in nThailand face is not the lack of opportunity but the lack of backing from there family.

[yabaaaa]

I'd say as in many countires its hard to separate the "poor" from the "bone idle" claiming to be poor.

Edited May 11, 2010 by yabaaaa

[loong]

I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education. It is not the lack of education possibilities in Thailand but the lack of interest to take advantage of what is out there.

I also live in the rural area of Thailand and have relatives to prove, if the desire is there so are the opportunities. My wife comes from one of those poor rural families, her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree in education his wife also has a masters degree and nteaches at a local high school, all three children have at least bachelors degrees, the oldest currently working on her doctorate in chemestry, the youngest on his masters in physics, the oldest will be attending MIT in the U.S. to finish her doctorate. If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.The problem most children in nThailand face is not the lack of opportunity but the lack of backing from there family.

You say "I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education" then you go on to say "her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree "

So you agree that the standard of education in rural Thailand is poor.

Congratulations to your family members who have done so well, but they are more the exception than the rule.

I agree with you about the lack of commitment and dedication. My missus was enrolled in an adult further education class on Sundays, but most students drifted away and often the teacher couldn't be bothered to show up. Lack of commitment by the students and the teacher.

[Heng]

Yeah, and if only Thailand had more street basketball courts and school programs, then the NBA would be full of Thais.

Or maybe there's more to it than that?

[WinnieTheKhwai]

He simply usurped others..... deeds and if so the honor belongs to people like Prem and Anand, that is why he tries to frame them as the "amitiya" which supposedly suppresses the people - quite daring - isn't it?

But also speaks volumes about the character of the people behind all this!

As an onlooker I feel more and more disgusted!

As an onlooker, you're looking at Ko Samui, Surat Thani. We know what you see, and it isn't Issan.

Edited May 11, 2010 by WinnieTheKhwai

[Meridian007]

Good article. I agree with the other posters that who state that we are looking at Thai poverty through western eyes, and that when Thailand is compared to other "global-south" countries, it is actually (still!) doing quite well.

Wealth distribution in Thailand is no more extreme than in most industrialised countries. The poorest 10% of the people of Thailand own 2.6% of the nation's wealth. The richest 10% own 33.7%. In the U.S., the comparable figures are 2% and 30%, in the U.K. 2.1% and 28.5%. These statistics may not be wholly reliable, but distribution of wealth is unquestionably much more equitable than in China, India, Brazil or South Africa. Even isolated Thai villages, especially in the central plains, would seem very prosperous to rural Pakistanis and positively utopian to most Nigerians. Thaksin's much-vaunted "village revolving development funds" financing local enterprise had their antecedents in the 1970s.

I'd love to see your sources for this, I have the stats for Thailand, but the western country stats are surprising.

The thing that worries me is that while the plight of the rural poor might be better here than other global south countries, it is precariously balanced on the back of the water supply. The current heat waves, (which are becoming more frequent), coupled with the water restrictions in the Mekhong because of China's dams, could topple any lead that the rural Thais have. That, more than anything else, may impact the future of Thailand, both internally and externally. This is why I've said that Thailand needs to focus on setting up a large scale passive desalinator near the coast rather than worrying about creating a nuclear reactor.

[Heng]

This is why I've said that Thailand needs to focus on setting up a large scale passive desalinator near the coast rather than worrying about creating a nuclear reactor.

Great idea. The water bottlers surely will all be doing it eventually.

cc: [email protected]

bcc: [email protected]

[thaihome]

I'd love to see your sources for this, I have the stats for Thailand, but the western country stats are surprising.

Have posted this before, but some people really hate it....

Numbers come from wiki, but have verified the CIA ones against the fact book

TH

[sarahsbloke]

Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years

Most of the girls I have spoken to left school at age 12 ....... those that continued on to high school are clearly in the minority.

If you goto any local village you can find the high school graduates working in the 7/11 stores, and they always have staff wanted notices out.

They forgot to include the fact any slightly pretty village girls get sent to work as prostitutes.

If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.

No, I have the answer for you

1) Nobody fails in Thailand, if you can afford the course fees you pass the course.

2) If you have cash you can purchase good grades, if not from your teacher, then the admin office will do the deal.

Edited May 11, 2010 by sarahsbloke

[IanForbes]

Spee quote...

That looks a new 3-wheel ATV and the front wheel of a fairly new motorcycle. They couldn't have been too far down and out.

It's all second hand stuff... $600 motorcycle and $200 ATV. They didn't consider themselves being down and out. But, that's not the point. It's all relative to where you are and the cost of living there. All I was pointing out is people's perspective of what is poor. We can't look at poverty in Thailand the same way using western standards. People can be very happy living on very little. I know multi-millionares who are not happy because they don't have enough.

I grew up in Vancouver just after the 2nd World War. My father had a low paying job and there was no money left over for anything. I was one of 3 siblings and we all shared the same bedroom. We had no heat in our rented apartment and it got below freezing in the winter. But, we never thought of ourselves as being poor. It was just life and you accepted it. I enjoyed my childhood because I had the freedom to roam anywhere I wanted. There was no mollycoddling of children like there is today. When I wasn't going to school I walked everywhere, and my siblings and I stayed outside from morning to dusk.

And, that is all I'm pointing out from the hill tribe villages in Thailand that I've visited. Everybody has a shelter. Everyone has enough to eat... even though it is simple food. The children all go to school and the children seem happy. The young girls get married early and everyone seems to chip in with the work.

[PeaceBlondie]

The Thai statistic says a Thai woman now gives 1.65 children. Statistic. Your anecdote is not a statistic.

Total fertility: 1.65 children born/woman (2009 est.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_...Total_fertility

This varies within sub-statum. I made a woman pregnant 9 times - and I'm a bi-sexual.

[citizen33]

I thought the OP was less than convincing when it came to those things that I know anything about. Taking health care as an example, he argues on the one hand that health care for the poor pre-dated Thai Rak Thai, but then seems to pull in some evidence from the current post-reform period. If the hypothesis is that the rural poor did not benefit from the 30 baht reforms and their later development, I'd say that this is out of kilter with almost all the published evidence. For example, see the articles below - there are many more with similar findings that will be thrown up by any search on google scholar.

http://www.nhso.go.th/eng/content/uploads/...from_the_uc.pdf

http://environmentportal.in/files/health-wb.pdf#page=380

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/view...ntentId=1795483

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/conte...tract/28/3/w457

Another more conceptual issue concerns the reference group that rural people look towards. The OP seems to think that there is such a huge gap between their situation and mass media representations of affluence, that poor people do not aspire to those heights Yet as others have hinted, most Isaan villages now have their quota of Western-style houses and flashy vehicles, and I have certainly detected attempts by locals to keep up. That seems to be reflected in the section of the redshirts who complain so much about social inequality.

[loong]

The Thai statistic says a Thai woman now gives 1.65 children. Statistic. Your anecdote is not a statistic.

Total fertility: 1.65 children born/woman (2009 est.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_...Total_fertility

This varies within sub-statum. I made a woman pregnant 9 times - and I'm a bi-sexual.

Who are you replying to?

and what does 1.65 children born/woman (2009 est.) mean?

It certainly does not mean that every Thai woman had 1.65 children in 2009 on average.

I would imagine that it means something like the average amount of children born by women above childbearing age./ This in itself means nothing as a lot of the women in this statistic will still have many childbearing years ahead of them.

[billythefish]

What utter drivel!

You are trying to compare poor Thais to Poor US?

Get real!

Since when was the 30 baht hospital scheme available for "Decades"

Every village in Thailand was on the electricity grid long before Thaksin came on the scene, and virtually every village family has a refrigerator, electric rice-cooker, TV, radio and a couple of oscillating fans. Almost all rural households have a motorcycle, though it may be old and battered. In every village several families own pickup trucks. Animals are no longer used for farm work except in extremely remote corners of the kingdom. If farmers don't have a mini-tractor of their own, they rent or borrow one from a neighbor.

And tell me how many hours out each 24 hour day did they have a supply?

Unemployment in Thailand is 1.4% -- among the lowest in the world. Here it has to be cautioned that employment statistics are notoriously unreliable. Even in advanced countries, economists cannot agree whether to include the under-employed and those not actively seeking work. But unskilled work, if not well-paid, is not hard to find. My Bangkok apartment building has had a "security guard wanted" sign out for weeks.

What utter rubbish! Where did you get these figures from? are you including the five year olds that have to beg for a living?

During the dry season, many farmers supplement their income with construction work in the cities. But some prefer to do without extra luxuries and live the slow-paced, well-fed rural life. Two or three years ago, I found it impossible for several weeks to find a plumber to put in a new bathroom. Many "peasants" have become self-employed entrepreneurs and done well for themselves. Thaksin's policies had no discernible impact on the labor force.

How grateful they must be to have to migrate as slave labour to simply survive!

Wealth distribution in Thailand is no more extreme than in most industrialised countries. The poorest 10% of the people of Thailand own 2.6% of the nation's wealth. The richest 10% own 33.7%. In the U.S., the comparable figures are 2% and 30%, in the U.K. 2.1% and 28.5%. These statistics may not be wholly reliable, but distribution of wealth is unquestionably much more equitable than in China, India, Brazil or South Africa. Even isolated Thai villages, especially in the central plains, would seem very prosperous to rural Pakistanis and positively utopian to most Nigerians. Thaksin's much-vaunted "village revolving development funds" financing local enterprise had their antecedents in the 1970s.

The biggest laugh yet - complete and utter crap - go and read Handleys "The King Never Smiles" probably the best ever book on Thailand - then take off your rose tinted spectacles!

All main roads in Thailand are paved (close to First-World standards), and most secondary roads are surfaced, as are a good many of the tracks that lead into remote villages, even in the poorer north and northeast parts of the country. It was like this when Thaksin was still a bankrupt ex-cop.

Paved to first world standards...you must be living on Mars!

Come up here with your Benz - you are going to need a major service - and obviously you have never driven from CM to BKK - on highway 1 - it has potholes deeper than WW1 Trenches!

Almost no Thais are unable read & write. Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years (note that girls are ahead). About 1.75 million post-secondary students (over 20% of their age group) are enrolled in universities (ranging from world-class to barely respectable), two-year colleges or vocational schools. Bright kids from poor families get government scholarships, so up-by-the-bootstraps success stories are so common as to be unremarkable. This high rate of upward social mobility goes back at least half a century.

HAAAAA HAAAA HAAA really? where do you live? Go and read here - the Bangkok Post - not exactly a paper to braoadcast Thailands "failings" so this must be the tip of the iceberg!

http://www.bangkokpost.com/blogs/index.php...tistics?blog=64

http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-an...apter0class.pdf

It has very little to do with Thaksin, regarding any of this, the poverty is there because it serves a purpose= slaves! Thaksin, Abhisit mean nothing in this equation, it goes so much higher!

Try selling some rice outside of Thailand! you can get 20-30 Baht / Kilo in real world markets, but the local farmers in CM this year are getting 6 Baht!

They should BURN their rice crops (if they could) just to send a message - personally, I would go down the route of farming to eat, self sufficiency for a couple of years and teach these SHITS a lesson! Give them NOTHING to export, but it won't happen

What a pile of Kee Kwai!

Edited May 11, 2010 by billythefish

[billythefish]

As Lemmy once said - "Eat The Rich "

Edited May 11, 2010 by billythefish

[Johpa]

There are a few misconceptions in the original article. First, although most rural folks own the land under their modest homes, a large percentage, sometimes up to 50% in any one tambon, rent their padi land. Second most rural folks are greatly underemployed. Wages in many rural regions for casual labor remain at just over 100 baat per day. Although true poverty is not as common as it once was, it still exists throughout Isaan and up in the minority villages up north. But most families, despite having their cell phones, satellite TVS, and electric fans inside their modest homes, are always just one small misfortune away, from going back into a state of poverty. One of my brother-in-laws has one of the largest homes in his village although due to a combination of poor decision making, less than robust health, and debt, now lives in a big empty shell. The largest house in the village is now domicile to one of the poorest residents of the village.

The comparisons to cohorts in North America is laughable. No carpenter in the US would want to be living on the edge of poverty that a rural carpenter in Thailand exists upon on a daily basis. Rural Thai carpenters do have a skill, but most often are greatly underemployed, and in fact tend to work in carpentry only a few months out of the year at best. And comparing farmers, please spare me. There are few enough true farmers left in in the US apart from the large corporate farmers who are contracted out by the few large processors such as ADM, and who survive only because of the government subsidies (US farmers live a socialist dream yet vote Republican, so don't think that Thai farmers supporting a megalomaniac like Thaksin is all that strange) due to the strange political structure in the US which gives the vast Midwest farmlands unwarranted over representation in the US Senate.

The writer of the piece is clearly observing rural Thailand from the outside with little real understanding of life in the villages. One can easily define unemployment in a manner that leads to a low number, but fails to capture the reality of endemic underemployment. The author finds other statistics to build up his/her neo-sahib views of the rural class (oh my, I could not find me a plumber), but as one who has spent many a year in the rural north, I find little of his tone to ring true.

[RPETER65]

I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education. It is not the lack of education possibilities in Thailand but the lack of interest to take advantage of what is out there.

I also live in the rural area of Thailand and have relatives to prove, if the desire is there so are the opportunities. My wife comes from one of those poor rural families, her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree in education his wife also has a masters degree and nteaches at a local high school, all three children have at least bachelors degrees, the oldest currently working on her doctorate in chemestry, the youngest on his masters in physics, the oldest will be attending MIT in the U.S. to finish her doctorate. If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.The problem most children in nThailand face is not the lack of opportunity but the lack of backing from there family.

You say "I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education" then you go on to say "her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree "

So you agree that the standard of education in rural Thailand is poor.

Congratulations to your family members who have done so well, but they are more the exception than the rule.

I agree with you about the lack of commitment and dedication. My missus was enrolled in an adult further education class on Sundays, but most students drifted away and often the teacher couldn't be bothered to show up. Lack of commitment by the students and the teacher.

I could have phrased that differently, I am not agreeing,or disagreeing that the education system is poor, what I am saying is that it seems to be good enough for children to be succesful if they are willing to work for success.

[RPETER65]

Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years

Most of the girls I have spoken to left school at age 12 ....... those that continued on to high school are clearly in the minority.

If you goto any local village you can find the high school graduates working in the 7/11 stores, and they always have staff wanted notices out.

They forgot to include the fact any slightly pretty village girls get sent to work as prostitutes.

If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.

No, I have the answer for you

1) Nobody fails in Thailand, if you can afford the course fees you pass the course.

2) If you have cash you can purchase good grades, if not from your teacher, then the admin office will do the deal.

That may be true but the family I speak of does not come from money, and if the grades were only paid for where did the knowledge for the continued success come from, while what you say may be true it does not take away from the fact that true success is possible.

[billythefish]

There are a few misconceptions in the original article. First, although most rural folks own the land under their modest homes, a large percentage, sometimes up to 50% in any one tambon, rent their padi land. Second most rural folks are greatly underemployed. Wages in many rural regions for casual labor remain at just over 100 baat per day. Although true poverty is not as common as it once was, it still exists throughout Isaan and up in the minority villages up north. But most families, despite having their cell phones, satellite TVS, and electric fans inside their modest homes, are always just one small misfortune away, from going back into a state of poverty. One of my brother-in-laws has one of the largest homes in his village although due to a combination of poor decision making, less than robust health, and debt, now lives in a big empty shell. The largest house in the village is now domicile to one of the poorest residents of the village.

The comparisons to cohorts in North America is laughable. No carpenter in the US would want to be living on the edge of poverty that a rural carpenter in Thailand exists upon on a daily basis. Rural Thai carpenters do have a skill, but most often are greatly underemployed, and in fact tend to work in carpentry only a few months out of the year at best. And comparing farmers, please spare me. There are few enough true farmers left in in the US apart from the large corporate farmers who are contracted out by the few large processors such as ADM, and who survive only because of the government subsidies (US farmers live a socialist dream yet vote Republican, so don't think that Thai farmers supporting a megalomaniac like Thaksin is all that strange) due to the strange political structure in the US which gives the vast Midwest farmlands unwarranted over representation in the US Senate.

The writer of the piece is clearly observing rural Thailand from the outside with little real understanding of life in the villages. One can easily define unemployment in a manner that leads to a low number, but fails to capture the reality of endemic underemployment. The author finds other statistics to build up his/her neo-sahib views of the rural class (oh my, I could not find me a plumber), but as one who has spent many a year in the rural north, I find little of his tone to ring true.

Most of the folks DO NOT own their land, they are on Por Nor ghor Nung - the land has no chanote and can be taken away at the governments whim, which is already happening, the land titles are already being denied here after 10-15 years ownership! So don't kid yourself that they OWN anything, they simply produce and farm for the wealthy - once they stop being a source of income, the land will be seized!

[billythefish]

Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years

Most of the girls I have spoken to left school at age 12 ....... those that continued on to high school are clearly in the minority.

If you goto any local village you can find the high school graduates working in the 7/11 stores, and they always have staff wanted notices out.

They forgot to include the fact any slightly pretty village girls get sent to work as prostitutes.

If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.

No, I have the answer for you

1) Nobody fails in Thailand, if you can afford the course fees you pass the course.

2) If you have cash you can purchase good grades, if not from your teacher, then the admin office will do the deal.

That may be true but the family I speak of does not come from money, and if the grades were only paid for where did the knowledge for the continued success come from, while what you say may be true it does not take away from the fact that true success is possible.

Hence every academic achievment here is worth SHIT!

[billythefish]

I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education. It is not the lack of education possibilities in Thailand but the lack of interest to take advantage of what is out there.

I also live in the rural area of Thailand and have relatives to prove, if the desire is there so are the opportunities. My wife comes from one of those poor rural families, her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree in education his wife also has a masters degree and nteaches at a local high school, all three children have at least bachelors degrees, the oldest currently working on her doctorate in chemestry, the youngest on his masters in physics, the oldest will be attending MIT in the U.S. to finish her doctorate. If there is only the poor education you speak of how could they have done this with all there primary education done at the rural public schools. I have the answer for you, dedication and a lot of years of hard work, and a lot of encouragement from there family.The problem most children in nThailand face is not the lack of opportunity but the lack of backing from there family.

You say "I agree with some of what you say, but take exception to your view of Thai education" then you go on to say "her brother, dispite the poor education in rural Thailand managed to get a masters degree "

So you agree that the standard of education in rural Thailand is poor.

Congratulations to your family members who have done so well, but they are more the exception than the rule.

I agree with you about the lack of commitment and dedication. My missus was enrolled in an adult further education class on Sundays, but most students drifted away and often the teacher couldn't be bothered to show up. Lack of commitment by the students and the teacher.

I could have phrased that differently, I am not agreeing,or disagreeing that the education system is poor, what I am saying is that it seems to be good enough for children to be succesful if they are willing to work for success.

Good enough for what? to be a slave? Please, you people are an embarresment - what kid from the sticks has a cat in hells chance - unless you want to quote "Dek Chai Mong" yes the surname says a lot - the claim to fame was making fuc_king paper aeroplanes for gods sake!

None of these poor kids have a chance, they are made to grovel and kow tow from the day they are born!

[mpetersen]

Construction workers make 200 baht a day. The price of a Big Mac set. Yep, not bad at all.

Why would a thai worker need a big mac set? That's equivalent to a New York office worker going to Circo or Mylos for their daily lunch or dinner. A really decent nutritious lunch here can be had from 15-20 baht. Minimum wage earners in Thailand are far better off than minimum wage earners in US, Europe or other developed countries because of the local earning power of their minimum wage here.

[philw]

What utter drivel!

You are trying to compare poor Thais to Poor US?

Get real!

Since when was the 30 baht hospital scheme available for "Decades"

Every village in Thailand was on the electricity grid long before Thaksin came on the scene, and virtually every village family has a refrigerator, electric rice-cooker, TV, radio and a couple of oscillating fans. Almost all rural households have a motorcycle, though it may be old and battered. In every village several families own pickup trucks. Animals are no longer used for farm work except in extremely remote corners of the kingdom. If farmers don't have a mini-tractor of their own, they rent or borrow one from a neighbor.

And tell me how many hours out each 24 hour day did they have a supply?

Unemployment in Thailand is 1.4% -- among the lowest in the world. Here it has to be cautioned that employment statistics are notoriously unreliable. Even in advanced countries, economists cannot agree whether to include the under-employed and those not actively seeking work. But unskilled work, if not well-paid, is not hard to find. My Bangkok apartment building has had a "security guard wanted" sign out for weeks.

What utter rubbish! Where did you get these figures from? are you including the five year olds that have to beg for a living?

During the dry season, many farmers supplement their income with construction work in the cities. But some prefer to do without extra luxuries and live the slow-paced, well-fed rural life. Two or three years ago, I found it impossible for several weeks to find a plumber to put in a new bathroom. Many "peasants" have become self-employed entrepreneurs and done well for themselves. Thaksin's policies had no discernible impact on the labor force.

How grateful they must be to have to migrate as slave labour to simply survive!

Wealth distribution in Thailand is no more extreme than in most industrialised countries. The poorest 10% of the people of Thailand own 2.6% of the nation's wealth. The richest 10% own 33.7%. In the U.S., the comparable figures are 2% and 30%, in the U.K. 2.1% and 28.5%. These statistics may not be wholly reliable, but distribution of wealth is unquestionably much more equitable than in China, India, Brazil or South Africa. Even isolated Thai villages, especially in the central plains, would seem very prosperous to rural Pakistanis and positively utopian to most Nigerians. Thaksin's much-vaunted "village revolving development funds" financing local enterprise had their antecedents in the 1970s.

The biggest laugh yet - complete and utter crap - go and read Handleys "The King Never Smiles" probably the best ever book on Thailand - then take off your rose tinted spectacles!

All main roads in Thailand are paved (close to First-World standards), and most secondary roads are surfaced, as are a good many of the tracks that lead into remote villages, even in the poorer north and northeast parts of the country. It was like this when Thaksin was still a bankrupt ex-cop.

Paved to first world standards...you must be living on Mars!

Come up here with your Benz - you are going to need a major service - and obviously you have never driven from CM to BKK - on highway 1 - it has potholes deeper than WW1 Trenches!

Almost no Thais are unable read & write. Girls on average get 14 years of schooling and boys 13 years (note that girls are ahead). About 1.75 million post-secondary students (over 20% of their age group) are enrolled in universities (ranging from world-class to barely respectable), two-year colleges or vocational schools. Bright kids from poor families get government scholarships, so up-by-the-bootstraps success stories are so common as to be unremarkable. This high rate of upward social mobility goes back at least half a century.

HAAAAA HAAAA HAAA really? where do you live? Go and read here - the Bangkok Post - not exactly a paper to braoadcast Thailands "failings" so this must be the tip of the iceberg!

http://www.bangkokpost.com/blogs/index.php...tistics?blog=64

http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-an...apter0class.pdf

It has very little to do with Thaksin, regarding any of this, the poverty is there because it serves a purpose= slaves! Thaksin, Abhisit mean nothing in this equation, it goes so much higher!

Try selling some rice outside of Thailand! you can get 20-30 Baht / Kilo in real world markets, but the local farmers in CM this year are getting 6 Baht!

They should BURN their rice crops (if they could) just to send a message - personally, I would go down the route of farming to eat, self sufficiency for a couple of years and teach these SHITS a lesson! Give them NOTHING to export, but it won't happen

What a pile of Kee Kwai!

This will be deleted but what you say is perfectly true, with a capital F..............

Well said..............

phil

[philw]

Construction workers make 200 baht a day. The price of a Big Mac set. Yep, not bad at all.

Why would a thai worker need a big mac set? That's equivalent to a New York office worker going to Circo or Mylos for their daily lunch or dinner. A really decent nutritious lunch here can be had from 15-20 baht. Minimum wage earners in Thailand are far better off than minimum wage earners in US, Europe or other developed countries because of the local earning power of their minimum wage here.

You have to be kidding................

50% of a days wage on a meal ???

ph

[WinnieTheKhwai]

There are a few misconceptions in the original article. First, although most rural folks own the land under their modest homes, a large percentage, sometimes up to 50% in any one tambon, rent their padi land. Second most rural folks are greatly underemployed. Wages in many rural regions for casual labor remain at just over 100 baat per day. Although true poverty is not as common as it once was, it still exists throughout Isaan and up in the minority villages up north. But most families, despite having their cell phones, satellite TVS, and electric fans inside their modest homes, are always just one small misfortune away, from going back into a state of poverty. One of my brother-in-laws has one of the largest homes in his village although due to a combination of poor decision making, less than robust health, and debt, now lives in a big empty shell. The largest house in the village is now domicile to one of the poorest residents of the village.

The comparisons to cohorts in North America is laughable. No carpenter in the US would want to be living on the edge of poverty that a rural carpenter in Thailand exists upon on a daily basis. Rural Thai carpenters do have a skill, but most often are greatly underemployed, and in fact tend to work in carpentry only a few months out of the year at best. And comparing farmers, please spare me. There are few enough true farmers left in in the US apart from the large corporate farmers who are contracted out by the few large processors such as ADM, and who survive only because of the government subsidies (US farmers live a socialist dream yet vote Republican, so don't think that Thai farmers supporting a megalomaniac like Thaksin is all that strange) due to the strange political structure in the US which gives the vast Midwest farmlands unwarranted over representation in the US Senate.

The writer of the piece is clearly observing rural Thailand from the outside with little real understanding of life in the villages. One can easily define unemployment in a manner that leads to a low number, but fails to capture the reality of endemic underemployment. The author finds other statistics to build up his/her neo-sahib views of the rural class (oh my, I could not find me a plumber), but as one who has spent many a year in the rural north, I find little of his tone to ring true.

VERY well said!!

[anon7867763]

This thread is headed "The rural poor of Thailand"

I live amongst the Rural poor and so I do not agree with much of this article.

You're basing all of this on your own personal experiences while they took a large statistical and economic look at the entire country. Their information is far more valid than your simple anecdotal and biased perspective.

Statistics are based on available data. If the available data does not accurately reflect the facts then the statistics will be inaccurate.

When a large percentage of the population works on a casual basis for cash in hand with no record of their employment, there is insufficient data to allow statistics to be accurate.

When a set of statistics are not supported by what I can see with my own eyes, I believe that my observations are more valid than the statistics.

Whenever I read about unemployment figures in Thailand, the figures are always estimated. Why estimated?

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkl...moz35&sao=0

Exactly the point , there are no statistics for rural thailand so these orginazations are speaking (as usual) complete rubbish.Anyone who beleives them in this case is completely blind and ignorant

[fullcave]

Construction workers make 200 baht a day. The price of a Big Mac set. Yep, not bad at all.

Yes and the Udon Thani Mac Donald's was packed again today (a weekday) with Thais!! All these locals could be having a much healthier and authentic Thai meal with rice for about 20 Baht but instead they choose to waste 200 Baht on some low class greasy POS Big Mac set?

Also being that it's a weekday perhaps the poor creatures are all out of work with nothing better to do then go shopping at the mall.